The Path to Farewell
by Asael
Summary: If anyone were to haunt Hibari, it would surely be Rokudo Mukuro. Some 1869.


Hibari has been having strange dreams since Mukuro died. He never remembered his dreams before, so he can't help but notice these strange new ones.

Sometimes Mukuro is in them, sometimes he isn't. Sometimes Hibari is wandering lost in the mist, and those dreams annoy him most of all. What is that supposed to be, a metaphor or something?

Hibari wonders if Mukuro is still around. The man is dead, dead and gone, he knows it - he saw it, saw the blood and the way his body crumpled to the floor, saw the light leave Mukuro's eyes.

But a body is just a shell, for Mukuro more than anyone, and if prison didn't end him, why would death? He's a cockroach, a cancer, impossible to wipe out. It would be just like him to jump into another body and tease Hibari.

***

The shirt he was wearing that day hangs in his closet, pressed and clean and unstained. The cleaners are skilled, and it wasn't that much blood, not really. Why waste an expensive shirt?

Hibari didn't meant to catch Mukuro, he'd rather let the man fall, but he fell against Hibari and Hibari caught him without thinking. That's when Mukuro's blood stained his shirt, and that's when he saw Mukuro die.

He's seen countless people die. It's all the same - blood and pain and despair. Hibari still feels vaguely disappointed. He thought that Mukuro would somehow be different, but he was just the same as every other death.

Then again, Hibari always thought Mukuro would die by his hand.

He feels cheated, like Mukuro broke a promise.

Hibari looks at the shirt each morning when he gets dressed. He doesn't wear it.

One day, when he opens his closet, the bloodstain has returned. Hibari isn't surprised. He wears that shirt that day.

No one even looks twice.

***

The dreams grow more vivid.

Hibari is talking to Mukuro. He says, "Your life was mine to take." Mukuro laughs and laughs.

They fight. Hibari's tonfa shatter bones, spill blood that turns into pearls before it hits the ground. Mukuro says, "I'll give it to you. A lover's token." But he disappears before he can say what.

Mukuro's hands are on him, though they're only the faintest of touches. Hibari is rough, pulls him closer, but the distance and chill remains. "We never did this," Hibari says angrily, and Mukuro just smiles and says, "But you wanted to."

Hibari wakes up hard, angry and wanting. These days he is more irritable than ever, and even Kusakabe is careful around him.

Tsuna is starting to worry about his Cloud Guardian, but doesn't know what to say.

***

He finds owl feathers on his pillow one morning. He slips them into his pocket and goes to the meeting Tsuna's called. It's nothing important, just routine mafia business, and now and then Hibari's fingers brush the soft, downy feathers in his pocket.

When they break for lunch, Yamamoto tries to talk to him. He is brushing the man off as usual when something catches his eye. A flash of red, so familiar, in Yamamoto's left eye.

In an instant Hibari has him up against the wall, a tonfa at his throat. As strong as Yamamoto is, he has no chance to react.

The other Guardians stare. Tsuna steps forward, but before anyone can intervene, Hibari lets him go.

It's gone, whatever it was. If it was even there to begin with. There's not a trace of red, of Mukuro, in Yamamoto's eyes.

He turns and leaves without saying anything, and behind him the whispers start.

He doesn't care what they say.

***

Hibari has always been the sanest person he knows, but now even he is beginning to doubt.

He's dreaming those strange dreams, and now he's seeing things. If Mukuro were alive that would be no reason to doubt his sanity, but Mukuro is dead and buried. Despite everything, Hibari knows that's true. He was there. He knows deep down that Mukuro didn't have the time or the strength to jump into another body.

Mukuro is dead.

So then what is happening to Hibari?

***

He goes to see Chrome.

Her eyes are red - from tears, nothing else. She does her duty but they all know she's been lost since Mukuro fell. He is no longer there to lead her.

Hibari does not speak to her carefully, like the others. Kindness makes her uncomfortable and he has no patience for it anyway.

Of course she confirms it. If Mukuro lived, she would know - but he doesn't. He's rotting in the ground, that smug smile being eaten by worms.

He tells her about the dreams, the visions - hallucinations, whatever they are. She looks at him like she thinks he's lying, playing a game with her.

The owl feathers are still in his pocket. He shows them to her.

Chrome looks at them for a long time, touches them with shaking fingers. Finally, the only thing she says is, "Why not me?" She looks as though she's about to cry again, but she is able to compose herself. Barely.

Hibari just wants an explanation. Chrome's, however, is extremely unsatisfactory. Mukuro is gone - she knows that. Not in another body, not reborn, not hiding in the crevices of Hibari's mind. But Hibari is not going insane, either.

It's an unsatisfactory explanation, but it fits, and she seems so sure. Besides, Hibari rather dislikes the alternate idea of him going insane.

It is just like Mukuro to haunt him, anyway.

But he has to echo her words. "Why not you?"

This time she is calm, she can answer. And this time her explanation makes perfect sense, though it is only a guess - and Hibari suspects that it's made mostly so she can feel better about her master choosing someone else.

It's not about a deep connection, unfinished business, or even Mukuro's old pleasure in pissing Hibari off.

It's because he was there. He held Mukuro in his arms, saw the light in his eyes die as he drew his last breath. Hibari's face was without a doubt the last thing Mukuro saw.

Hibari has no desire to consider any other explanation.

He leaves Chrome looking lighter, happier. Her master is there, even if he isn't really. Things aren't so bad anymore.

***

Mukuro's grave is not in the Vongola cemetery. His annoying followers refused to have him buried among mafia. Instead, he was buried in the small forest at the very edge of the main Vongola estate - and Hibari thinks it was only because Tsuna wouldn't allow them to take the body off Vongola property.

It only has a small grave marker, not even a headstone, with nothing on it but the three kanji of Mukuro's name. Hibari has not visited the grave until now. Though Tsuna insisted on a wake in Mukuro's honor, Chrome did not want his burial to be an event. She and the others took care of it on their own, maintaining Mukuro's independence to the end.

Hibari didn't attend the wake either, for that matter. He doesn't remember why. Most likely he just saw no reason to - and he realizes that in the back of his mind it didn't feel like Mukuro was really gone.

Which is a foolish thought, even with what Chrome has convinced him of.

He stares at the grave marker, wondering why he even came here. To yell at it, desecrate it? To order Mukuro to move the hell on and stop making Hibari think he's gone insane? As if that would work.

To apologize for focusing only on his fight, for letting Mukuro die? But Hibari doesn't apologize for anything. If Mukuro died, it was his own fault. Hibari bears no responsibility.

Hibari just stares at it for a long time. If he could say one thing to Mukuro, Mukuro in the flesh again instead of whatever scrap of spirit has attached itself to Hibari, what would he say?

Nothing. But he's beginning to realize that he might act differently, with the knowledge that Mukuro wouldn't always be turning up like a bad penny to mock him and ignore him and make him angry.

That makes him uneasy.

***

That night, Hibari dreams of walking in the rain, pouring rain pounding on his skull, not washing away things as the Vongola say but drowning him instead. Maybe it's not rain, maybe it's a waterfall, maybe he's underwater.

Someone is walking next to him, and even in his dreams Hibari is irritated. He can't see that person even if he looks, but he knows who it is. Who else could it be?

"Go away," Hibari says. "You're dead." His words don't make a sound, swallowed up by the water around them, but he can hear Mukuro's reply.

"Do you really want me to go?"

"iYes/i," he says, but he realizes that he is holding on to Mukuro's wrist, hard enough to bruise it if they were real. The water is gone, he can feel the breeze now, and he finds them - of course - under a sakura tree.

"We won't meet again," Mukuro says. He doesn't look sad, not in the way Hibari knows he can, the way that's as false as every one of Mukuro's smiles. But there's something in his eyes that Hibari can't name.

"You're stupid," Hibari says, "I'll join you in hell sooner or later." Where else would Mukuro go? Where else will Hibari go? "Or we'll meet in the next life, and I'll bite you to death."

Mukuro laughs, and Hibari doesn't find it as annoying as he once did. "Then I'll wait for you. I won't ask you to remember me." He leans close, brushes his lips across Hibari's cheek. His lips are cold - he's dead, after all - but that doesn't matter.

He takes a step back and looks at Hibari. "I know you won't be able to forget."

The sakura tree is gone.

***

When Hibari wakes, he doesn't remember what he dreamed about, but he feels better. He smiles faintly to himself and brushes the sakura petals left on his pillow onto the floor. He doesn't think there will be any tomorrow.

That's all right.


End file.
